


Drowning

by PrinceDarcy



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Dark Will, Episode Related, Gen, Hallucinations, Non-Canonical Character Death, Someone please help Will Graham, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-16
Updated: 2013-11-16
Packaged: 2018-01-01 17:29:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1046571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrinceDarcy/pseuds/PrinceDarcy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will knows what he’s going to say. He’s going to tell Hobbs to turn around and not look at him. Hobbs is going to drive him to Dr. Lecter’s office and then, only then, will Dr. Gideon be real.<br/>But the first word out of his mouth is a very firm “Yes.”</p><p>The scene between Will and Dr. Gideon in Rôti goes a bit differently.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drowning

Will feels like he’s drowning in the back seat of Dr. Gideon’s car, like he’s damp not from sweat but from white water rapids that flood over him and push his head under, icy cold water forcing itself into his lungs but doing nothing to chill the burning fire inside of him. He burns and freezes and the sound of his own heart pounds mercilessly in his ears, and the gun in his shaking hand feels like dead weight.

He removes the safety and contemplates, for a moment, sticking the barrel of it in his mouth. Pulling the trigger and feeling himself pop like a balloon with a pin stuck through it.

And then Garrett Jacob Hobbs slips into the driver’s seat, and Will’s lungs fill with air again as he pushes his head out from under the water.

“I was expecting the Chesapeake Ripper.” Hobbs says in Dr. Gideon’s voice, oh so deliberately, the confusion not even sounding genuine – but then again, nothing about him was really genuine anymore. He turns his head back to look at his passenger, leaning over the armrest, and Will pities him because he’s nothing more than a toy who a cruel little man decided to reprogram. So lost that he can’t even see his face, because he’s not real. Dr. Gideon is nobody, nothing but a voice drifting from the mouth of a dead man. “Or are you he?”

Will knows what he’s going to say. He’s going to tell Hobbs to turn around and not look at him. Hobbs is going to drive him to Dr. Lecter’s office and then, only then, will Dr. Gideon be real.

But the first word out of his mouth is a very firm “Yes.”

And then everything falls apart.

Hobbs looks as if he has seen the face of God in that moment, dead eyes filled to the brim with what Will can only describe as worship, and before so pitifully loyal a disciple, any man would become what he is seen to be. Sweat still drips down his face but the gun in his hand is no longer shaking, and Will says in a voice that seems to come from far away, “Turn around and drive. There’s an abandoned factory five miles from here. They won’t tail us there – they’re going to be too busy making sure the other psychiatrists are safe.”

He sees Hobbs smile in the rearview mirror as he starts the car.

 “Mr. Graham, if I may say, you are not quite what I had expected.” Five minutes later Hobbs sounds incredulous in his reverence, and a burst of laughter escapes Will’s mouth. Of course, of course, he’s not what anyone would expect the Chesapeake Ripper to be, because he isn’t the Chesapeake Ripper, but in that moment he is and he is nothing short of a method actor when it comes to getting into killers’ heads.

“Too young?” Will taunts, a smile contorting his face. “Too _unstable_?”

“Now, don’t go getting defensive. There’s no shame in being a little unstable.” Hobbs is so damn patronizing that Will wants to shoot him right then and there, but that isn’t how the Chesapeake Ripper wants to kill Dr. Gideon. That isn’t how Will Graham wants to kill Garrett Jacob Hobbs. “But you must have had a _very_ early start, Mr. Graham.”

“Why do you think it’s taking them so long to catch me?” Will laughs again, and if he couldn’t feel his chest heaving in the effort he wouldn’t know it was coming from his own mouth. “They’re looking for a surgeon. I’m telling them they’re looking for a surgeon. _My_ surgical experience? I dissected frogs in seventh grade. I decided to branch out.”

Hobbs is buying it hook, line and sinker, and if Will didn’t know this was all some elaborate story he was coming up with on the fly to keep his driver away from Alana Bloom, he’d believe it himself. But he knows. It’s a lie. It’s all a lie.

“All respect intended, Mr. Graham, but you don’t look your best.” Hobbs says airily from the front seat. Will doesn’t look at him, staring instead along the top of his gun as it blends into the sharp lines of the road. Beads of sweat dripped down his chin and oh, he knew he didn’t look his best. “ _You look like hell_ ,” Jack had said. He felt like hell. He still feels like hell. Every beat of his heart is like the beat of a mallet against the drum that is his skull but the Chesapeake Ripper’s hands aren’t shaking like Will Graham’s would be. “You look _ill_ , in fact.”

“Breaking out of a court services van and tying organs to the branches of a tree before draining Dr. Paul Carruthers of his blood was not an invitation to have me tell you about the state of my health.” Will replies, and he is amazed by the fact that he sounds so very venomous. “Nor was the mess I’m _sure_ you’ve made of Dr. Chilton.”

“You haven’t seen the gift basket I left for you? What a shame.”

“Agent Crawford didn’t want me in there.” He smiles again, smiles like he’s dead inside and has been for a very long time. “How lucky that you had the same idea. We couldn’t have had this little chat in front of Freddie Lounds and a charming team of FBI agents who think I’m nothing more than a clever teacher with a temporary badge.”

“They really give those out to anyone these days, don’t they?” Hobbs muses, empty eyes fixed on Will in his mirror. “If only they knew.”

“If only they knew.” Will repeats. There’s nothing for them to know. He isn’t a killer. That isn’t the kind of crazy he is. But it’s the kind of crazy the Chesapeake Ripper is, and in those empty eyes of Garrett Jacob Hobbs, that’s who’s sitting in the back seat.

The rest of the trip passes in suffocating silence.

Will kicks down the back door of the long-empty factory with strength he didn’t realize he had in his legs, and Hobbs follows him into the cold void of the building like a lost puppy trailing something it thinks is its mother. When they’re inside, when the dark empty walls stretch out around them, that is the first time that he looks Hobbs straight in the eyes.

“You were seeking out the Chesapeake Ripper because you felt that he could tell you who you are.” He sees the water pouring from the rafters as hooves click on the concrete behind him and his sight starts to blur around the edges. The feathered stag breathes hot air down his neck and the image of Hobbs ebbs like the tide, and Dr. Gideon stands in his rightful place.

“You’re drowning in the middle of the ocean with nothing to hold onto.” The waves crash around him and his mouth fills with saltwater. A dark-haired young girl impaled on the stag’s antlers gives way to a woman crucified on the wall of her own home, intestines spilling out through a wide incision in her side through which he – the Chesapeake Ripper, that is – had removed her kidney and liver. Will had never seen that crime scene in person, only in photographs. He isn’t sure why it’s the one that came to mind. “You want the Ripper to hold out his hand and pull you to shore.”

Will aims his gun. Dr. Gideon does not speak.

“All I can tell you, Dr. Gideon,” His throat is tight and he tastes acid. “is that dead men don’t spend all that much time worrying about who they are.”

 _“I shoot Dr. Gideon expertly through the neck.”_ Will thinks to himself, another murder so perfectly unrelated filling his mind as he pulls the trigger. _“This is not a fatal wound; it misses every artery. He will be paralyzed before the bullet leaves his body. Which doesn’t mean he can’t feel pain. Only that he can’t do anything about it.”_

“This is my design.” He whispers out loud, and steps toward the immobile mass that is Dr. Gideon to set about carrying it out.

And then he wakes up drenched in sweat in his bed in Wolf Trap, Virginia to the sound of his phone ringing.

Jack Crawford’s voice greets Will when he picks up.

“We found Dr. Gideon.” Jack says so stoically that Will thinks, lets himself think, for a moment, that it was all a bad dream. He looks himself over. There’s not a speck of blood anywhere on his person, and his jacket, thrown over the foot of his bed, is clean as well. Jack’s about to tell him that Dr. Gideon is in custody, he tells himself.

 “And,” Jack’s voice shakes just slightly on that one word, almost imperceptibly, but Will notices things like that. Will’s job is all about noticing things like that. “it looks like the Chesapeake Ripper found him first.”


End file.
